SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 373: $1m+ On Green Contracting Company and Tech Executive
01 Aug 2016
Chapter 1: How did Lillie Cameron start her green construction company?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks is Dustin Goodwin. He's in the HR industry, specifically in the software as a service space, looking to increase his revenue. So congratulations, Dustin.
For your guys' chance to win 100 bucks every Monday on the show to build your idea, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now and then text the word Nathan to 33444. Again, text the word Nathan to 33444. This is episode 373, Top Tribe. Coming up tomorrow morning, you'll hear from Nick Kulin. He's a 13-year-old who started his business, now worth $1.2 million in 2016.
Top Tribe, welcome back to another episode. Today, we've got Lily Cameron with us. Lily, are we excited?
We are very excited. A little bit.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Lillie face with fixed rate contracts?
Not quite sure about you yet.
All right. Yeah, we're still warming up. We're just sort of deciding how we're going to sit and how that all works. But Lily is the Director of Project Management and Business Operations at Rackspace. But that is just one thing she's doing. She's a brand new mom, which we're going to talk about.
So if you're watching right now and you're a mom or a dad with a newborn, you're going to want to watch this one. But she also has her own business, which we're going to learn about as well. So Lily, are you ready to take us to the top? Sure. All right, let's do this. So first things first, tell us about the side business you have or the small business you run.
Sure. So in 2007, my business partner and I, who is now my husband, long story, founded a green construction company. So really focused on building healthy, high performance homes. It actually all started when we had a friend, a co-worker of ours, who his wife, lost a child late in pregnancy from all the chemicals that were in their house. And that's kind of what it turned out being.
And so we have had a passion around construction, building, business, and started a construction company.
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Chapter 3: What is the importance of eco-friendly construction?
It's a design build firm now.
What's the name of the business?
EcoSafe Spaces.
Eco-save spaces. Okay. And so walk us through how it makes money. Is this like an architect, you're selling plans or you're doing the work or what?
There's design services and build services. So I'm at the part where I get to get to be the co-founder owner and get to be involved now in the strategic business decisions. I was much more involved several years ago, but essentially my husband's the general contractor and he also offers design services and we have architect in-house that we work with, but we'll also work with clients architects.
And we'll take you from a new build, ground to completion, all the permitting, all the work, all the way to new build or large scale rebuild.
What does the full process look like in terms of cost? If I was doing like, let's maybe tell me if you can about a customer that you actually worked with recently.
Sure, sure. So one of our most recent projects that we just completed is on the corner of Holly and Waller, beautiful area of downtown Austin, central. And so this was a project where the client actually purchased a double lot. And they had an architect already that they were working with.
And so we came in and handled all of from the permitting and all of the different work streams that it takes to build a home. over the course of the last year and built a very custom home and a garage apartment on that lot overlooking beautiful downtown Austin.
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Chapter 4: How does EcoSafe Spaces differentiate itself in the market?
It's pretty. What does the what's the cost or something like that run?
So you're looking at we're doing jobs around that would run roughly around your half million range.
Okay so and that is for typically kind of the full cycle they bring you in right at the beginning work with the architect make sure everything's green healthy.
Right. And there's actually some work that's done to make the home extremely energy efficient. We have third party companies and we've gotten tests done that we have some of the most energy efficient homes in the city.
Wow, that's amazing. I mean, it requires a lot of attention to detail. How are you getting people, you know, a lot of, you're the person to ask this question, Ju, so I'm going to ask it. Kind of the green space, right? The biggest thing is convincing people that it's going to pay off or like the pennies you're going to save on the X is going to be worth it over the long run.
Or maybe the sale point is, hey, like we had a friend who lost a child. This is really, really important. How are you typically selling these services? What's the sales pitch sound like?
You know, it's actually not, doesn't have to be much of a sales pitch. I think the demographic in Austin understands the importance of air quality, of, you know, building things that are sustainably minded and really being conscious of that, of our energy usage. And that's,
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Chapter 5: What role does Lillie play at Rackspace?
To me, I think Austin's a great place for that. You've got a lot of people who are already really passionate about that space.
The last several Monday video interviews have been Austin people. I feel like half my audience is going to be moving to Austin. We're going to do these live. There's going to be people, there's going to be a live audience and shots, and it's going to be a lot of fun, right?
Yeah. I mean, as a native Austinite, watch out for the traffic. Please, public transit and bike.
Traffic and thunderstorms. By the way, thunderstorms can be very beautiful depending on which building you're in, right?
Yeah, absolutely. When there's not flooding.
Yeah, it's good.
It's another fun problem we've had lately. So tell me again. I'm not trying to scare anyone off by moving to Austin.
I didn't get the date on the opening of the economy, kind of the eco-building business. 2007.
2007, okay.
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Chapter 6: How does Rackspace support new parents?
And on the economics of that, let's just use $500,000 as an example. On a $500,000 sale that you guys are doing, contract, what do the margins on that look like? Do you keep all that, or what are your costs?
I mean, it depends. It depends on if you're doing a...
a fixed rate versus a cost plus contract um you know we actually made a a pretty big boo-boo in the last in the last year on a fixed rate contract where we thought we had we thought we had estimates done really well um the project went over what we thought was going to be right so a fixed rate contract is essentially where you say hey we know exactly what this project is going to cost it's not going to go over that amount we've you know done the estimates and we we feel fairly confident in that and so the customer knows that they're going to pay this much
So you're, but that's on you, that liability's on you, you're estimating. Right, the liability's more on the bill, yes. So if you get a bill, if you get a homeowner though that wants to customize every dang thing and rip and put things out and they drive you above budget, then what?
And don't handle change, well you usually have a clause in there for change orders that if, you know, if there is actually a scope change or a change to what was agreed upon, that there's a cost associated with that. Okay. And then a cost plus contract and
in a nutshell is essentially where you can be a little bit more agile and as in the building process, especially when you're building custom homes, it's really important to be able to be agile through that process because I'll tell you what, once you see that over there and then you realize, oh, I really want my kitchen to open this and I want this wall to be open and I want to do this and I want to do this.
Those are changes that clients will make and they'll want to make and you want to work with them on that process. And so we'll do it, whatever the cost is for the build, you're completely upfront with the cost. The customer see all of the invoices, everything, and then you're paying a margin, a fee, 20%, what have you for the builder on top of that.
So tell me how bad that mistake hurt, that fixed rate deal you did, how much did you lose on that?
That was probably a $50,000 hit. Okay.
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Chapter 7: What are the maternity and paternity leave policies in the US?
That was early on or this year?
That was early this year. Early this year. This year.
So do you only do, what was the other name of the contract? Cost Plus. You only do Cost Plus now?
Yeah, and especially with the projects that we're doing and allowing us to be a little bit more agile, Cost Plus tends to work out better for both parties.
Okay. About how many projects will you do per year?
It varies on the size of the project. So if you're if you're typically, you know, we're only doing larger scale remodels, but new builds two or three, because usually these are fairly high, extremely high touch. Yeah. And, you know, so I would say anywhere in the realm of, you know, at the end of last year, we were finishing up seven projects, but that's that's a high end of things.
Those all, I mean, so that was, I mean, that must've been a really good year where there's all about $500,000 in blocks. I mean, is that like a- Not all. Okay. But like, that's like a $3 million-ish year.
Almost.
Close.
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Chapter 8: What advice does Lillie have for balancing business and motherhood?
Yeah. Okay. Why does that make you uncomfortable? No, no, no, no, no.
It's a good thing. No, it's a great thing.
It's like, you should follow her, right? Go like study all of her stuff. All right, I want to talk coming up a bit about your role at Rackspace because this is not like an easy fluffy duffy position, right? And you just had a child. So I want to talk about kind of how you're not only doing a side business and your family is very entrepreneurial, but also managing that as well.
But before we get there, what's the plan going forward for the economy business? If it keeps growing, would you stop Rackspace and go there or how's it going to work?
You know, that's always something that's on the table. I love the role that I have now. I love actually being able to be involved in tech and have my own thing and have that diversification. And look, as small business owners versus working at a company like Rackspace, my husband and my family get to be on my insurance. There's benefits, so we're diversifying, handling that risk carefully.
So what year did you enter Rackspace?
2009.
2009. And what were you doing before that?
So I was doing the business and then before that I was also doing project management and the tech, well for a financial services firm, but in the tech sector.
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